Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven

Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven (ECC/HANH) is the public housing agency serving the City of New Haven. We serve over 6,100 families and over 14,000 individuals through our public housing, housing choice voucher and low-income housing tax credit programs. Through our affordable housing programs, residents pay no more than 30% of their income toward their housing expenses. Families are supported in reaching their life goals through a full array of supportive services that lead to the increased income, entrepreneurism, education attainment, homeownership and more.

Karen DuBois-Walton (Y’89), Ph.D. is a public administrator who leads in the fields of housing and community development. She leads efforts within New Haven, CT and the Region to remove barriers to fair housing, to reverse housing segregation patterns and to invest in under-resourced communities. In her professional role, she serves as the President of the Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of the City of New Haven offering affordable housing and supportive services to thousands of low-income families. Previously, she served as Chief of Staff and Chief Administrative Officer for Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. in the City of New Haven, CT. Prior to her work in local government, she served with the State of CT Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and Yale Child Study Center. Dr. DuBois-Walton was appointed to the CT State Board of Education by Governor Ned Lamont in 2020 and served as Chair from 2022-2024. She is actively involved on a number of non-profit boards including serving as Chair the Board of The Melville Charitable Trust, Teach for America and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and roles with other organizations that allow her to dedicate time to creating greater equity for those who are marginalized. Dr. DuBois-Walton earned her B.A. from Yale University and M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Boston University. Dr. DuBois-Walton resides in New Haven with her family.

Dwight Hall at Yale

Dwight Hall at Yale is one of the nation’s largest campus-based public service and social justice advocacy organizations. The Hall now supports 74 student-led member groups, experiential learning for 165 term-time and summer fellows, emerging projects, and signature programs; and mobilizes nearly 4,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students who provide more than 60,000 volunteer service hours each year across a range of the most pressing issues facing society today, including education, public health, mental health, hunger and homelessness, and criminal justice reform. Throughout its history, Dwight Hall has been a fixture of New Haven efforts as part of broader societal movements for change, including the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War protests. As an independent 501(c)(3), Dwight Hall is affiliated with, though financially and operationally separate from, Yale University. Members of the Class of 1989 and participants in the service project may support the Dwight Hall Annual Fund online or mail a check to P. O. Box 209008, New Haven, CT 06520.

Johnny Scafidi (Y’01) serves as Director of Community Outreach and Engagement for Dwight Hall at Yale. Inspired by alumni and residents working collaboratively to transform their communities, Johnny was eager to remain in New Haven after graduation. Now in his twenty-third year on staff, Johnny is inspired on a daily basis and coordinates the advancement of collaborative service and justice initiatives in Greater New Haven and beyond. He currently serves as President of Liberty Community Servies, a New Haven non-profit that seeks to end homelessness through supportive housing rooted in a harm-reduction model, and President of the Edith B. Jackson Child Care Program, a Yale-affiliated leading provider of quality child care. When he is not advising students or hosting community members in Dwight Hall, you can often find him traversing New Haven on foot or bus, or on soccer fields throughout Connecticut as a joyful grassroots coach.

New HYTEs (New Haven Youth Tennis & Education)

New HYTEs (New Haven Youth Tennis & Education) is an awarding-winning program that provides weekly academic tutoring, tennis coaching and life skills mentorship to New Haven's economically disadvantaged youth Grades 1-12. Founded in 2010 by the Yale Men's tennis coach and players, New HYTEs provides a long-term afterschool pathway for students beginning Grade 5 to ensure high school graduation and post-secondary success. Learn more. For more information, contact Scott Staniar CEO New HYTEs / Yale '85.

Scott Staniar (Y’85) is CEO of New HYTEs Inc. Scott brings a wide range of business, urban youth development and tennis leadership experience to New HYTEs, along with ties to the New Haven area. Scott graduated from Yale in 1985, where he captained the Yale Men’s tennis team and earned All-Ivy honors in singles & doubles. After 15 years of corporate leadership with Pepsi, Cadbury Schweppes and American Express, Scott led a USTA national multi-cultural advertising campaign and regional launch entitled Tennis Welcome Centers; designed to increase inner city tennis participation rates. One of those pilots included East Shore Park in New Haven, which has served thousands of students since its inception. Scott also served for 6 years as the Vice President of Tennis, Fitness and Summer Programs for Tenacity Inc. in Boston; where he led a summer program serving over 5,000 Boston and Worcester students with tennis and academic mentorship, along with a middle school program serving over 500 elementary, middle, and high school students.

Andrew Metrick (Y’89) is the Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management at the Yale School of Management (SOM) and the Director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1994, and a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Yale in 1989. Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 2008, he held positions in the finance department at Wharton and the economics department at Harvard. In academic year 2009-10, he was on leave at the Council of Economic Advisers in Washington. Upon returning to Yale, he served as the Deputy Dean of SOM from 2010 to 2016.

Squash Haven

Squash Haven’s mission is to empower New Haven youth to strive for and maintain school success and physical wellness, and to forge a path through higher education to engaged citizenship. Squash Haven relies on a small full time staff base whose work is complemented by the volunteer efforts of Yale University’s squash teams and academic volunteers. Squash Haven team members become part of a thriving learning community that prepares them to realize their very bright futures.

Julie Greenwood, Executive Director. Under Julie’s leadership, the program has grown from 20 aspiring young people in 5th and 6th grades to 160 in 5th through college. Julie believes passionately in youth development, education, community building, college access, and values deeply the intersection of all four in her daily life at Squash Haven. Julie graduated from Williams College, where was a 3 time All-American as well as the recipient of the Purple Key Award for the outstanding female athlete in her class. She earned her Master's in Education from Stanford. Julie lives in New Haven with her husband, Kieran, and sons, Dylan and Rory.

Tom Clayton (PC ’89) is a Partner at A & M Capital Partners. Tom graduated from Yale and received a JD from The Yale Law School. Tom was captain of the Yale University Men's squash team in 1989 and is currently on the Board of Skillman Associates. He is Co-Chair of the Squash Haven board.

Class of 1957 Music in Schools Program 

The award-winning Class of 1957 Music in Schools Program (MISI), was established by a gift from the Yale Class of 1957 with the goal of promoting music education in public schools in New Haven, CT as well as throughout the United States. The New Haven program, which pairs graduate student teaching artists from the Yale School of Music with public school children and music teachers in the New Haven public schools has grown to involve 1000 children a year. MISI has worked to provide instruments, instruction and mentoring to children involved in an array of choral groups, ensembles and bands. In addition, Biennial national symposia have examined how to overcome impediments to music education across the nation.

The class of 1957’s advisory board has turned committee leadership over to members of the class of 1989 and welcomes any 1989 class members who would be excited to become involved.

Dawn M. Bravata, M.D. (SY ’89) trained as a house officer and Chief Resident in the Yale School of Medicine Primary Care Residency Program, during which time she lived in Saybrook College as the resident graduate affiliate. She completed her fellowship at the Yale Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Clinical Scholars Program and then joined the Yale School of Medicine faculty. She is currently Professor of Medicine and Neurology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. She has served as a primary care general internist and health services researcher for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) since 2000. Her research focuses on the care and outcomes of patients with complex medical needs. Her current work supports community-dwelling older persons as they age in place. Over the past decade, she has developed a variety of initiatives using participatory music to enhance well-being including a music-making program for Veterans with housing insecurity living in a VA Homeless Domiciliary. She supports the Indianapolis-based Veteran Band project which is a collaborative effort between Butler University and the Indianapolis VA. She was a member of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Youth Orchestra (2010-2019) and has been an advisory board member of the Yale Class of 1957 Music in Schools Program since 2019. She lives in Indianapolis with her husband (SY ’88) and two sons.

James Lockman (SY ’89) manages Adobe’s Technical Success Services team in the Americas, helping Creative, Document and Experience Cloud customers with complex Named User Licensing and Adobe platform integrations. James is an Adobe Founders’ Award winner, projecting the Adobe Core Values as a Scouts BSA leader, STEM Education advocate, and volunteer Game Announcer with FIRST Robotics. In 2019, he was named FRC Volunteer of the Year at the FIRST Detroit Championship. He has served as Board Member and President of the Yale Science & Engineering Association, leads the Yale Club of Maine, and plays occasionally with the YPMB. James has been a member of the Yale Class of 1957 Music in Schools advisory board since 2019. James lives in Maine with his wife (BR ’92), where he makes maple syrup each spring with his family.

Alison Wittenberg (BK'89, YSN '96, YSN '07) is a psychiatric nurse practitioner with a private practice based in New Haven and Orange, CT. Over the years, Alison has been committed to working with adolescents and adults in the New Haven community as a nurse practitioner in multiple school-based health clinics as well as at The Yale Adolescent Clinic, The Fair Haven Community Health Center and the New Haven Juvenile Detention Center. While at Yale as an undergraduate, Alison served as a Walden student-to-student counselor and delighted in playing guitar with friends. She continues to find joy in music and writing and has published works of creative non fiction. Her enthusiasm for the Music in Schools program stems from her commitment to the New Haven community and her belief in the value of making music available to all. Alison has been a member of the Yale Class of 1957 Music in Schools advisory board since 2019.

Inspiring stories from classmates who intentionally pivoted to pursue their passions.

Debbie Epstein Henry (Moderator): Debbie Epstein Henry is a lawyer turned entrepreneur, speaker, author, and communication coach, with expertise in careers, women, workplace dynamics, and law. She had a terrifying health scare as a 26-year-old newlywed and third year law student that informed lots of risk-taking in her career. By 1999, Debbie was an unhappy part-time lawyer and mom, trying to advance to partner and also play an integral role in her kids’ lives. She sent out an email to a handful of women struggling with the same issues. Within days, 150 lawyers responded. Soon after, Debbie left the law to become a professional speaker and grew what was then a brown bag lunch group to a national network of over 10,000 lawyers — first women, and eventually anyone who understood that the legal model was broken. With two partners, she parlayed the network to co-found Bliss Lawyers, a company that hired hundreds of lawyers to work on temporary engagements for Fortune 500 clients across the US. In February 2020, Debbie co-facilitated the successful acquisition of Bliss by its largest competitor, Axiom, the global leader in high-caliber, on-demand legal talent. For the last 25 years, she’s run DEH Consulting, Speaking, Writing and given nearly 1,000 talks; she also shares her learnings as a communication coach, inspiring leaders to communicate with confidence. Debbie has worked internationally for more than 15 years, including engagements in Paris, Madrid, Vienna, The Hague, London, and more. Hundreds of news outlets have featured her work including The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio. Debbie is a member of the Brooklyn Law School Board of Trustees and a past President and former Board member of The Forum of Executive Women. She and her husband of 30 years live in the New York area; they have three grown sons.

Kristine Budill: Kristine Budill has eleven years of teaching experience in the areas of math, engineering, computer science and finance. She is currently Director of Holy Child’s Engineering, Architecture & Design and Leadership Institute in Finance signature programs at School of the Holy Child, an all-girls, Catholic, independent, college-preparatory school for grades 5-12 in Rye, NY. Holy Child’s signature programs allow students to make interdisciplinary connections and explore subjects not typically taught at the secondary-school level with the goal of empowering them to pursue careers where women still represent a minority. Kristine is also a board member of the Yale Science and Engineering Association and of Engineering Tomorrow, a nonprofit that seeks to create a more diverse engineering workforce to solve the engineering challenges of the future. Prior to her role as an educator, Kristine spent over ten years working at a private equity fund that invested university endowment funds and contributions from high-net-worth individuals in medical device companies. She also served as the Director of Business Development at Haemonetics Corporation, where she was responsible for analyzing, negotiating, and managing corporate investments in new technologies and businesses. Her early career included a variety of technical and managerial roles at General Electric Aircraft Engines and ITT Fluid Technology Corporation. Kristine holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Yale University and graduate degrees in electrical engineering and management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a participant in the Leaders for Manufacturing Program. She also completed a NY State Teacher Certification program at Manhattanville College.

Malcolm Dickinson: Malcolm Dickinson majored in German at Yale, and after a couple local jobs in New Haven, moved to New York to work in management consulting. At first this looked like a good way to get ahead, but it ended up being a series of five unsatisfying jobs at different companies. After getting married and moving to Stamford, Connecticut, he spent several years as a stay-at-home dad to two sons, who are now 13 and 15 years old. As they grew, he took a three-year course to train as a Montessori teacher and taught elementary school in New Haven and Fairfield. In 2019, after 25 years of spending weekends flight instructing, he left teaching to take a full-time job as a pilot for a regional airline. He is now a pilot at United, flying the Airbus A320 between Newark, LaGuardia, and about 40 other cities in North America.

Jim Griffin: Program and project manager. A proud survivor of five careers (from public policy to construction to community development) and major organ failure. Shameless Appalachian, Stoic, and fulfillment optimizer for family, friends, and the greater good.

Matt Lieberman: In between jobs and on the literal eve of my fortieth birthday, I decided not to pursue another Head of School position in a different city but to stay where I was and try to make money for the first time in my life. I would start an insurance business with the support and encouragement of an insurance broker I had met when we lived in New Orleans. But I told myself that it wasn't forever. It would be my sole (and soul) focus for a decade, but then I'd try something else -- writing. I wouldn't close my business or try to stop making money, but my (soul) focus would become writing; my forties would be my money decade, and my fifties would be my literary decade. I'm over halfway through my literary decade right now with two books written, at least one more on the way, and a regular email newsletter called The Lieberman Files on Substack. When I turn sixty, I'll take up a new primary pursuit which I currently intend to be acting. As for my seventies and beyond, I'm not sure yet, but I have time. I call this my Decades Plan. After the fact, I have realized that my Decades Plan has gamified a big part of my life. And as I have thought more about it, I've concluded that this model of a game can work well for any of us as we imagine and reimagine our lives and what we want to do with them. Hence, the title of my upcoming book The Game: How To Imagine, And Reimagine, Your Life.

Deconstructing current trends in education from AI to free speech and more.

Olati Johnson (Moderator): Olatunde Johnson is the Ruth Bader Ginsburg’ 59 Professor of Law at Columbia Law School where she teaches, writes, and provides public commentary about antidiscrimination law, administrative law, courts, democracy, and inequality in the United States. She directs Columbia’s Constitutional Democracy Initiative and co-directs the Center on Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School. In 2021, she served on the White House Commission on the Supreme Court. In 2023, she received a Columbia University service award for her collaboration on the podcast “Through the Gale” about the role of lawyers after the pandemic and protests of 2020, and for organizing the “Beyond the Casebook” introduction discussion series on inclusive democracy. She has received several awards for her teaching and service including the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, and Columbia Law School’s Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2016. Prior to academia, Professor Johnson served as constitutional and civil rights counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Professor Johnson graduated from Yale University and from Stanford Law School. After law school, she clerked for Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court.

Emily Bernard: Emily Bernard is the author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and National Public Radio. Bernard is the winner of the 2020 Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose. Her previous works include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendship, which was chosen by the New York Public Library as a Book for the Teen Age. Her essays have been reprinted in Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Nonfiction. A 2024 Leon Levy Biography Fellow and a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, Emily is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Peter Fry: Peter's been teaching for the past 32 years, mostly as a secondary English teacher but earlier as both an elementary and middle school teacher. After starting his teaching career at Landon School in Bethesda, MD, Peter spent two years teaching in Morocco at the Casablanca American School, and then at Essex High School in Vermont while he was earning an M.A.T. at UVM. After graduate school, Peter taught English for six years at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio, and has been teaching for the last 19 years at Groton School in Massachusetts. In addition to his classroom work, Peter has also coached football, lacrosse, basketball, and squash. Peter's wife, Gretchen Hummon (Silliman '89), is also an educator who currently teaches fifth grade at a public elementary school in Fitchburg, MA.

Andrew Metrick: Andrew Metrick is the Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management at the Yale School of Management (SOM) and the Director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1994, and a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Yale in 1989. Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 2008, he held positions in the finance department at Wharton and the economics department at Harvard. In academic year 2009-10, he was on leave at the Council of Economic Advisers in Washington. Upon returning to Yale, he served as the Deputy Dean of SOM from 2010 to 2016. He lives in New Haven with his wife Susie, two cats, and occasionally his son David (Ezra Stiles’24) and daughter Amy (Silliman ’27).

Dan Scheibe: Dan Scheibe grew up on the Wesleyan University campus in Middletown, CT, where both of his parents worked. Having participated in the Teacher Preparation Program at Yale, Dan began a career in education, starting as an English intern at Jakarta International School (his friend and Yale classmate, Jed Esty, had preceded him there). From JIS, Dan went to teach English at Blair Academy in Blairstown, NJ, where he met his wife, Annie Montesano. Leaving Blair to pursue a Master of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary, Dan spent the next 4 years of his life finishing his M.Div. while managing a vineyard and winery outside of Princeton with Annie. In 1998, Dan joined the faculty at Middlesex School in Concord, MA, becoming the “Coordinator of Spiritual and Ethical Education.” Along the way, he also earned a M.A.L.S from Wesleyan University and, adding an assortment of administrative responsibilities, became Assistant Head of School at Middlesex. In 2012, Dan became the Head of School at Lawrence Academy, a 9-12 boarding and day school in Groton, MA founded in 1793. Dan and Annie have 4 children between the ages of 18-27: Lilly (SY '19), Tad, Peter, and Hans.

Sarah Wood: Dr. Wood is the Director of the Harvard Macy Institute at Harvard Medical School. She is a board-certified pediatrician, curriculum innovator, and educational leader. Her passions include innovative medical education, longitudinal integrated clerkships, and promoting life-long learning and ongoing professional development for health professions educators. Dr. Wood attended Yale University, where she majored in Psychology and graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors in Psychology in 1989. She completed her MD Degree at Harvard Medical School in 1995 and went on to train at Boston Children’s Hospital for her internship and residency in Pediatrics from 1995-1998. Dr. Wood then served as Chief Resident at Boston Children’s and as a faculty member for Harvard Medical School. Throughout her career in health professions education, Dr. Wood has served as a Clerkship Director, Curriculum Dean, Department Chair, Professor of Pediatrics, Vice Dean for Medical Education, and Interim Dean for the Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University. The medical school at Florida Atlantic, initially a regional campus for the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, was established in 2011 to address healthcare workforce shortages in the region. Dr. Wood worked for over a decade to build and develop the new school’s innovative curriculum, residencies, and partnerships with 10 regional hospital partners. In May of 2023, Dr. Wood returned to Boston to assume leadership of the Harvard Macy Institute and is committed to creating a global community of medical educators and leaders dedicated to transforming health care delivery and education. Dr. Wood has received numerous teaching and leadership awards and is active nationally with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the International Association for Health Professions Education (AMEE), the Council on Medical Student Education in Pediatrics (COMSEP), the Consortium of Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (CLIC), and is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and a diplomat of the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP). She is a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society and was a Harvard Macy Scholar in the 2015 Educators Program. Dr. Wood has published and presented her medical education work at local, regional, national, and international conferences, and serves as a medical education consultant around the globe. She has been married to her husband Mark for 26 years, and they are devoted parents to their daughters Alexandra (25) and Lila (22). They love to travel as a family and are foodies, explorers, and oenophiles! Whenever they can escape from work and school, you will find them with family on Cape Cod or hiking and skiing in Telluride, Colorado. Dr. Wood also enjoys walking, listening to podcasts, and looks forward to her yoga class every Sunday.